Yesterday Began
by FirenzeFuomo
Summary: During their first night in the hospital, Roy and Riza attempt to adjust to his blinded condition.


The people blurred together liked frayed bits of string twining with cloth. The noises they made, each and every person and every unique decibel emitting from the bustle around them, was nothing more than a buzz she could not discern. They faded…

She started forward, her body jerking, as her eyes snapped back open. _Stay awake, Riza,_ she scolded herself. She allowed her eyes to scan the chaos, across the scape of tents and running uniforms, to anchor on the image of him beside her. His face was hardened to stone, but his eyes flicked around a few times before they looked downwards, his eyes almost appearing closed, before they fully opened again and he was staring straight ahead once more. _He doesn't know if he should close them or not…_

Against her will, her own shut close as she was rippled with a wave of emotion. She hungered for that trench of adrenaline that held the uncanny ability to numb her of anything other than survival. Now, the gravity of their fate… _of his_ …began to splinter her insides as the trench wore away. The feeling settled into a puddle in her gut and between that and her drained veins, she felt uncomfortably nauseous.

"The sun's out, isn't it?"

Her eyes cracked open at the sound of his voice. Rising to the sky, she studied the hue of it and observed the willowy wisps of the white clouds.

"Yes," she answered him softly.

"I feel it."

She hadn't before, but suddenly at his observation, she did then too. The warmth of it soaked into her skin.

"Is it early?" he asked. "Have we been up all night?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know, sir," she confessed. "I'm unsure myself. I'm unsure of when this day began, if it was during the day or not."

She attempted to think back on it, to recall when they had gone down there…

She did not know and she abandoned the attempt of recollection only moments after seeking it. It was too exhausting, and she found she didn't care enough to fight for it.

* * *

Looking in the reflection, she imagined to be staring at a poster for a theatre play over Frankenstein's Monster. Stitches lined the front border of her neck like a rope. They had to reopen the deeper sections of her wound in order to properly disinfect it, having fears of the blade that had sliced her skin and the filth of the ground she once lay limp atop.

The skin now was a savage red, swollen and voracious and hideous. The scarring, they needn't have said, would be substantial.

In her youth, her peers would share in a child's myth about a young girl who went to school with the rest of her town, but was known for the ruby red ribbon that she kept tied round her neck. It was simple, and incredibly endearing. The ribbon was as identifying to the little girl as the color of her eyes or even her own name.

One of the town's children, playing innocently, gave the little ruby red ribbon a tug and it whispered off the girl's body like a secret. The head that sat atop the girl's shoulders tumbled suddenly down and crashed against her shoulder, kept attached to her flesh by only a tag of skin. It was a silly child's tale that the young would mutter to each other in an attempt to scare.

Riza's eyes were cemented to the reflection's neck, and she thought perhaps she ought to be wearing a ruby red ribbon.

She noticed that she'd been staring for quite some time and she forced herself to look away, reminding the muscles in her legs how to move as she programmed herself to walk out of the corridor's bathroom.

Her palm softly pushed against the door as she opened it and stepped inside.

"I'll ask one of the nurses tomorrow for some tea," she said as she took her first step in. From the stream of moonlight through the window, she saw his chin lift at the sound of her voice, a miniscule movement that showed he heard who was speaking. She wanted him to know who had entered the room without her directly announcing it was she.

"I don't know if you should be walking around," he murmured. She sighed quietly, too quiet for him to hear, as she lowered herself down on her bed. The dim beams of the night sky played on the wall.

"They filled me with enough blood to keep me upright, Colonel, I assure you."

"You haven't slept."

Exhaustion had been rampant, but rest alluded the two of them like shadows. Even after receiving aid, being admitted to a hospital and treated for their wounds, after the sun had long since set, they could not sleep.

"I'm awake enough."

He did not continue his case. He'd hardly moved, so still she barely saw his chest rising with breath since they'd been settled in their room. Sitting upright, a thin layer of sheets pulled up over his lap, he sat throughout the day and now throughout the middle of the night and, like she, was unable to dismiss the unending rush of awareness.

Her ears perked at the puff of air pushed out of his nostrils in something that sounded like a weak laugh. She blinked a few times and looked over at him, her brow drawn together, as she looked at his half smiling face.

"Colonel?" she asked with concern.

He shook his head and lifted his chin upwards, and if he were still a seeing man, he would be looking at the ceiling. He gave a little self deprecating shrug.

"I need the bathroom," he laughed weakly. The stoicism in his face finally cracked, for the first time in what seemed to be days, it cracked, and she saw him finally falter. His smile, so devoid of humor it burned her, grew as his head continued to shake in a kind of tortured disbelief, and she rose to her feet, closing the distance between their beds, summoning any remaining strength she had left to ignore the swelling hurricane of hurt inside her bones. She allowed her foot to scrape against the tile so he knew she was approaching before her hand rested under his elbow, and he only barely tensed at the contact.

"Fortunately, I've just been there," she said gently. "So I know where it is."

His face twisted and he dropped his head into his hand, his shoulders rising as his body flexed together. She felt the back of her throat burn, but she swallowed it down to disallow the sensation to affect the tone of her voice. They both were beginning to understand the gravity of his condition.

"Come on, Colonel."

She pushed her hand into his elbow, a nudge, and his hand dropped away from his face. The sheets rustled as his legs swung over the bed and he stood himself up. She scanned his face, looking over him, watching his eyes bear blankly into the wall in front of them. The man she'd known for so long, longer than anyone she'd ever known, longer than she'd known her own father, was living in a void without color, without light, and she could not help him.

A rise of panic prodded at her mind, a question of if he would ever see again, of how on Earth will he adjust to this, how will she adjust to this, but she forced it down quicker than it made itself apparent to her. One thing mattered, one thing demanded her attention, and it was guiding him down the hall.

She stuck out a foot, putting it gently in front of her, so he'd feel the summon of her exit. He reciprocated the step and took another, even before she, and she had to be reminded of her admiration for him. He hadn't given up, of course he hadn't.

It didn't mean, however, that he embraced the adjustment, and it showed in his struggle to keep his expression passive.

She pushed lightly against his arm, her hand now beneath his forearm and her other on the back of his tricep, to steer them from the edge of her bed as they continued their journey across the room.

Her eyes watched his feet as they moved, studying the floor for missed objects, and the dim light of the hallway peaked through the crack of the door they had suddenly come upon and she quickly shot her head up while simultaneously releasing his forearm to instead press quickly against his chest. He stopped immediately.

Severely scolding herself, hoarding the tension of the mental image of him crashing into the door, feeling his chest beneath her palm as though it were a hex, she silently twisted the knob of the door and pulled it open.

"Forget that we have to go through doors to exit a room?" he joked softly. He was donning half a smirk, and she knew he was attempting to save her from her own loathing.

"I don't know what you expect of me, Colonel," she tried to match his tone, reciprocating his quiet, teasing demeanor. "I can shoot guns, I can't offer any other talents."

"Well I don't know why I'm keeping you around, then."

They'd stepped into the hall, and she felt a distilled rush of relief at being back in the light so she could better protect him. The relief leaked away when she considered that he didn't have the luxury of sharing in it.

The hallway was empty. She heard a nurse truffle papers distantly. Without incident, they stepped gradually to the bathroom, and she led them inside.

"Toilet's right in front of you," she said once the door shut behind them. "I'll be outside."

"Don't you want to help me out with this, too?" he smiled. Smiling sadly back at him, she shook her head, almost doleful that he'd been jesting with her so much. He wasn't projecting his emotions; he was hiding from them.

"I'd rather host a dinner party, sir," she said. A corner of his mouth turned up, and she felt her sad smile turn a little more genuine. The door closed behind her as she stepped into the hall.

She released a heavy sigh, strangely feeling as though she hadn't been allowed to breath until then, and her back hit the wall opposite the bathroom. Off instinct, she lifted her chin as she let her vulnerability escape her, but the lift of her head stretched the seam in her neck and she had to stop herself from gasping as her head fell back down. A hand lifted to ghost across the wound…

If there was any silver lining to the colonel's predicament, it was her gratefulness that he wouldn't have to know how frightening she appeared.

A minute passed before she heard the door creaking open and she whipped her head to see him slip into the hall. She started forward and grabbed his arm the way she had before.

"It's fine," he brushed off. "I can find my way out of a room the size of a box."

"I know, but…"

"It's fine, Lieutenant."

She shut her mouth and looked at him a moment longer before starting them forward down the hall. She drove away the thought of him, hands flat against the interior of the bathroom, palming and shuffling his way to the door just to prove that he could.

"I didn't mean for that to come out so harsh," he said, his voice low enough to crackle.

"It didn't."

They glided down the hall with ease, walking at a pace they might otherwise match in different circumstances.

"You hate this, don't you?"

Her eyebrows curled together and she looked up at him, somewhat hurt and mildly shocked by the question.

"What? Hate what?"

"Hate that you can't protect me from this."

Her heart stopped and she had to force herself not to falter in her steps. Her throat tightened and she looked away, slowing their rate as they came upon their door. That wasn't what she thought he had meant.

Yet the statement struck a chord with her, a chord covered in a dust she didn't wish to brush away because she feared it's reflection. A surprising burn ghosted across the back of her eyes.

"Yes," she whispered as she pushed open the door. Placing a hand over on the shoulder furthest from her, she guided him through the door frame. "Yes, I do hate it."

There was a pounding against the wall of her chest, and she realized it was her heart rate as she was smothered in the memory of how this had happened.

Katanas stuck into the palms of his hands like pins in a cushion, his arms cemented into floor, a forced alchemic reaction as blue pulses of electricity crackled throughout the air pockets around them, and a horror she had never felt before mauling her as she watched him be stolen away…

She shook her head quickly, banishing the memory from continuing. Never, not even in Laboratory Five, had she felt such absolute, uncontrollable terror. In the laboratory, she'd been devastated, she'd been told he was dead, but then? Hardly less than a day ago?

It was like watching him be tortured and killed before her very eyes while she did nothing, could do nothing, and only scream for him so loudly that still her throat scratched even though the time had long passed.

The intensity of her screams, the monsoon of what little blood that had been inside her pumping with an indiscernible heart rate, had crashed into her consciousness after he'd disappeared and the two people beside her, she couldn't even recall who, had to catch her by her shoulders as she'd fallen to her knees.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked as she led them to his bed. She guided his hand to the bottom frame so he'd understand why they'd stopped. His hand slipped out of hers as he lowered himself onto the mattress.

She decided that she didn't possess the want to lie to him.

"What happened," she said in answer. She took a few paces back and sat on her own bed, the springs creaking.

He hummed quietly in his throat in response.

"And?"

"And what?"

"And what's your prognosis?"

Her teeth showed in a smile, and although he wouldn't see it, it was apparent in her voice.

"Prognosis, Colonel? My prognosis is I am…I am…astonished," she laughed on the word, "that the two of us are even alive. That anybody is still alive. That we're listening to the sounds of peace out the window as if it were another night, that I'm supposed to recognize safety, that I'm supposed to _trust_ safety at its word, because frankly I can't get used to the idea that I don't need to be looking over my shoulder at every moment."

She didn't mean for the words to tumble out of her, but honesty seemed to be her only source of meditation and it was bursting at the borders of her mind. In any other circumstance, she would have never unveiled this much honestly, particularly when it alluded to her own wellbeing. She rarely shouldered her troubles on him. She glanced over at him, at his silence as he mulled over her truth.

His ear was turned to her, but not his face. Not his eyes.

Her breath hitched in her chest and her eyes turned wet when she came to her worst realization, the epiphany lacerating her body, colliding with her like she'd been hit with a train, as she felt tears threaten the corners of her eyes before falling silently down her cheeks.

She would never be able to look into his eyes again, because he would never look into hers.

The thought crushed her more than any other thought she'd had that night.

"You know, I went into it expecting to die," he admitted after some time. "When we went down into the tunnels, I didn't anticipate returning."

She felt another hot tear fall as she whipped her head to look at him, astonished.

"What?"

"I was obtuse, unseeing due to my hatred. And I…"

It took him several long moments before continuing.

"And realistically, by default and statistic, I knew that at a bare minimum, one of our side wasn't going to make it through the day. And I was determined that if anyone, it would be me."

A confusing flare of anger tornadoed inside her, anger that he went into the battle with such a mindset, anger that he ordered her to remain alive but he himself wouldn't follow such directions. Did he care for his life so little?

"But then, when you were…" he started.

He let the words float away.

"I thought that I was wrong," he said. "I thought, it's not me who's not going to come home today. It's you. It's my lieutenant. And I hated myself so much for that, because the idea of losing you was…debilitating. I was so flippant, so uncareful…so I understand, what you said before. The gnawing feeling that we can't sink into comfort, and that danger is still waiting for us in the shadows…I can't escape it either."

Another wave of emotion rose up her throat, but she forced down the tears. They were unnecessary, and they were a burden on what the two of them needed to do; leave this all behind them.

"Except," he countered. "I have you to see for me. I can attempt to relinquish the hold on those fears, because I know you're right here, always, and you're watching my back."

His head bowed.

"I am sorry that you have to carry for the two of us."

"Don't be absurd, Colonel. This has always been my job, and my purpose. If I didn't have you to look out for, I would be nobody. Just a scared little girl petrified of her own skin."

"You should have died." His voice was nothing more than a steady murmur. "You should have."

Her fingernails curled into her palm. She looked down to the hands in his lap, bandaged over the impales of Bradley's sword.

"If that girl wasn't there…this girl who was never part of the plan…I'd be alone in this room right now."

"I don't know if things happen for a reason, Colonel…but she was there, for whatever reason. And now I'm in better shape than you. Please…don't dwell on that. I know it's impossible to eradicate the events we went through from your mind, but that piece…forget it completely."

He sighed heavily, his shoulders rising and falling with the breath, but he said nothing more of it.

"Tired, yet?" he finally asked. He was silhouetted against the window, dark enough that she couldn't read his expression.

"Not in the slightest."

"Are you in any pain?"

The tips of her fingers found place against her neck again, feeling the raise of the stitches in her skin. She slid her thumb across the line, reading it like a brailled book, comprehending the words forever sewn into flesh.

"Don't lie to me, either, Lieutenant," he said quietly. "Tell me."

"Why do you want to burden yourself with things you don't want to know?" The volume of her voice, a battle of who could be softer, was won by her.

"I do want to know."

"Yes."

A beat of hesitation precipitated his response.

"…Yes?"

"Yes, I am in pain," she clarified. "It does hurt. But it wouldn't feel right if it didn't. It keeps me…focused. I wouldn't wish to feel nothing."

"You're impossible," he chuckled dismally. "I sometimes wish you weren't."

"You're in pain, too, don't forget."

Her eyes flicked down at the movement of his hands, how he softly clenched his fists experimentally after she spoke.

"I suppose that's true. I do forget."

"Like I said; it wouldn't feel right otherwise. You know the same."

"Even though this is over…what we have to accomplish, this is only the beginning. I know you know that."

"Yes…" she watched him carefully, unsure of his intentions.

"So…I'll need you."

She swallowed hard, continuing to study him. It was curious how she continued to nod, even though he wouldn't know it. It was strange to hate nodding when she never had before.

"I'll be here," she said.

"Yes, but we didn't anticipate…this."

The roaming light of a car on the road outside slid across the room before disappearing. She heard its engine rumble past them.

"I need you to consider what that means," he continued. "You won't just be watching my back, you'll be guiding it. I don't trust anybody else…and not only that, but I can't be…extended by anyone else. You are an extension of me, with you I'm not as blind as I would be otherwise. With you I can walk."

The emotions she'd felt before, fear and anger and desolation, crumbled away like plaster. What he said, of course, went without needing to be said. Being his eyes became her duty the moment she saw the blankness in them. She'd already nested, already embraced, the purpose.

"You'll run."

His head turned towards her, and in the change of his position she saw his eyebrows draw together. The moonlight traced his profile.

"I've just followed you through hell, Colonel, why would I leave now? I'll be there, throughout time, and you'll run."

His head shifted to the side, a tilt likely tugged by emotion, and she heard a slow and heavy inhale go through his nose. He gave one single nod and let a few moments pass between them.

"To the top, then," he concluded.


End file.
